Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Microaggressions at the 2020 Hugo ceremony

by Rob - August 2nd, 2020.
Filed under: Awards, Conventions.

Many people of privilege (and I certainly qualify as privileged) don’t truly understand the concept of microaggression, something that others face every single day. George R.R. Martin gave a master class in it yesterday during the Hugo Award ceremony. As an ally of marginalized writers, I won’t talk about their pain: they have tongues of their own and are speaking loudly and clearly throughout the net today.

But let me elucidate one category of Martin’s microaggressions that cut across the entire spectrum of humanity by subtly excluding anyone not part of his old guard: his use of nicknames for writers and editors whose prominence was in days gone by, signaling that no matter who you might be, if you weren’t part of the inner circle back in the day, you’ll never really be a true fan (or pro) now.

In Martin’s very, very long commentaries during yesterday’s Hugo Awards ceremony, Robert Silverberg was “Silverbob,” George Alec Effinger was “Piglet,” and the editor Robert A.W. Lowndes was “Doc.” I think Martin also called Isaac Asimov “Ike” during his trips down memory lane, although I’m not going to sift through the hour and forty-five minutes of his rambling again (fully half of the total running time of the Hugo ceremony) to be sure.

You see? Even someone like me — 40 years a selling author in this field, and now 60 years of age — was never part of that ancient, early prodom. I’ve known Robert Silverberg since 1989 and knew Asimov and Effinger, too, but was never close enough to call them by cutesy nicknames.

And if someone like me feels left out after all these decades in the field, imagine how the newer writers, or the writers whose literary background wasn’t the American SF magazines, felt during the Hugo ceremony. Remember, this wasn’t casual conversation: this was the master of ceremonies reading from scripts he himself had written (he had them right in front of him) at the World Science Fiction Convention where an award is explicitly given for a new writer and where most of the Hugo nominees were new to the field, as well.

Yes, it’s a small thing — that’s why it’s called a microaggression — and it’s usually done without consciously intending to exclude or put down someone else, but microaggressions are pervasive and exclusionary in effect. We’d all do well to guard against committing them.

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